


The Sun's Been Known To Shine

by Suzume



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in District Twelve, adrift and bereft, Katniss and Haymitch find one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun's Been Known To Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



> title from ["Wandering Kind"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEFJk0BY3WE) by Laura Veirs

 

         Katniss talked to Greasy Sae more often than Haymitch even though he was still her neighbor (her mentor, her partner, the man who spoken to the court on her behalf and helped, again, to save her life).

         Simply continuing to be alive could feel difficult enough without subjecting herself to Haymitch's cutting words, true as they could be. She hurt in more ways than she could fathom, but at least her mind seemed to be processing things enough now that she could force herself to go through the most basic motions of living- eating, sleeping, walking around a little, alone.

 

*****

 

         Haymitch didn't seek out company, but he spoke easily with visitors when they came. He hadn't drunk so much in a long time and his dreams blurred together into his days. Peeta came, broken and gentle, and asked him any number of things about himself and Katniss and how was everyone doing and what about the burned bodies of his family? Where we they buried? But Peeta, Haymitch knew, was still in the Capitol.

         Maysilee came and his little brother, his mother and his gray-eyed girl from long ago- something like a lanky, lovely child when he had become a lonely, paunchy man. The niece of one of the dead victors from Nine he had known came and asked him if he wanted any of her uncle's book collection. Haymitch thought that one might be real, although he couldn't remember if he'd told her yes or no- Evelyn Castille was an awfully crazy choice for his subconscious to dredge up otherwise.

         Sometimes he would look out his front window and see Katniss standing in front of her house. Just looking at things, it seemed. "She's suffered a lot," he said to himself.

         And his own voice, or a version of it, higher and younger and still sort of hopeful, spoke up within him, not rebutting his initial words, but adding to- clarifying them: "Both of you have suffered a lot."

         Haymitch from way back when made a good point. When there had been more than just a scattered handful of victors, wasn't that what they had done? Suffered together? And here he was, living in the only Victors' Village that still housed more than a single victor born and raised there (last he had heard, Johanna was living with Annie for the time being), alongside Katniss, not talking to her.

 

*****

 

         The woods remained comfortingly themselves in a world razed and turned upside down. Katniss hadn't counted the number of days she had spent back in Twelve without visiting them, but the moment she was beyond where the largely-toppled fence had once stood she knew that number had been far too great.

         Under the trees, even if she were doing nothing more complex than looking at the patterns of shadows cast by light through the leaves and breathing in the air, she knew who she was; she knew she was free.

         Her father's bow remained where she had last left it.

 

*****

 

         Haymitch watched Katniss leave her house with a bow in her hand. It was the first time he'd seen that and he wondered where she'd gotten it. Going off on her own with a weapon probably wasn't something her therapist would have recommended (then again, what did Haymitch know about therapy?), but to Haymitch it seemed right- kind of like a good sign.

         He saw her coming and going like that a couple of times before he came out onto his front porch one day as she was leaving and addressed her, "Hey, sweetheart, can I join you?"

         She stopped short and frowned. She seemed confused, almost as if she didn't understand his words (was she lost so far in her head as all that these days?). "I- um, I'll do my best not to scare off the game," he continued.

         Then comprehension crept in. Slowly, Katniss shook her head, "I haven't been hunting yet. Not for real, anyway. I take the bow with me while I walk around."

         "In that case-"

         "As long as you're sober enough to walk, you can come," she agreed, "I don't want to have to try and carry you."

         "Sounds like a plan then."

 

 

*****

 

         Katniss got the impression that while this wasn't Haymitch's first trip into the woods, it was the first in a very long time. He ran his tough hands over bark and lichen, taking everything in with a thoughtful, thorough gaze. Sometimes he smiled without saying anything and she even wondered what he was thinking, but it was nice to be alone together and share the silence with him, so she didn't ask.

         Wherever they went, to the cabin where she had talked with Bonnie and Twill so long ago, or the lake, or just around, Katniss led and Haymitch followed.

 

 

*****

 

         Their trips into the woods became more frequent. Katniss was more at ease there than any place Haymitch had ever seen her. The mottled scars left by her burns blended together in the mix of light and shadows there like the dappled camouflage of some forest-dwelling creature. She was graceful and usually unselfconscious there. Of course, he couldn't come out and tell her that. It would ruin everything. He liked their walks. He remembered that his girl had liked the woods too.

         Cricket hadn't hunted, but she had picked berries when she could find them. "Somehow," she had said, "Being outside the fence... Feeling like you could be the only person in the whole world... It makes me feel so alive."

         Haymitch never quite grasped that sensation. He thought that maybe he was just too social of a person. For all that people had hurt him and he had worried about hurting other people since losing his family, he still felt better at least seeing others; knowing they were nearby. He had liked that a lot about Katniss and Peeta moving into Victors' Village. The empty house of Twelve's first victor who he had never known used to haunt him.

         The quiet of the woods was different than all that. It wasn't like the wind blowing through an open upstairs window of a long dead victor's home that Haymitch was too nervous to go inside and close. Victors' Village was meant for people, but it remained largely empty. The woods weren't meant for people.

         But Katniss belonged there anyway.

         When he slipped on some moss and fell on his ass (hard; he had a feeling he was getting old for this), Katniss turned and fixed him with eyes as Seam gray as Cricket's, but sterner. She offered him a hand.

 

*****

 

         Haymitch smelled like booze pretty much all the time again, but Katniss found she more or less no longer cared. It wasn't the life for her, but it had lost some of its shock value the more she understood his reasons for it.

         She was glad that he had asked to come into the woods with her. She would have never thought to offer that, but she found these long periods of paired solitude comforting. Haymitch had gone through a lot before she had even been born. And he kept on surviving.

         She supposed she would also go on living.

 

*****

 

                  There wasn't anything special about the day that they were sitting by the lake and Katniss, without turning to face him, asked, "Could I kiss you without it ruining all of this?"

         Overhead, the cloud cover began to thin as the sun broke through.

         "Hard to say," he admitted, "But I'd like it anyway."

         The strengthening sun was warm on his back.

         "It'd help if you would look at me then," she said, causing Haymitch to reconsider which one of them was truly turned away from the other. He shifted himself around to face her. Katniss's mouth and brow were set intently, but nervousness still shifted around in the dark of her eyes. She reached out and tightened her fingers into fists, gripping his shirt, and Haymitch wrapped his arms around her turn.

         It had been years since Haymitch's last real kiss. He and Katniss both had tasted at what might have been first love and, at a second taste, found it rotted and spoiled by powers beyond their control. At least she and Peeta might still salvage their friendship (Peeta would come back to Twelve someday- he had promised his mentor he would try). Haymitch hoped they could. They deserved it.

         It was fair to say that they deserved that, wasn't it? Because this- this-- Katniss was teaching him yet that what you got in life didn't necessarily correspond to what you deserved, or maybe no one could say for themselves what they deserved, or. Or, well, it didn't matter.

         She kissed him. Carefully at first, a dainty peck like he imagined she might have given her father; then rougher, more Katniss-like in his estimation, and it felt safe to kiss that way in return, pushing back a little. Her mouth was warm. Maybe any welcoming mouth was warm, but it had been so long...

         There was hope yet in her young body, Haymitch thought, if she felt the desire for human interaction, for touch, for physical passion. It struck him, eventually, that, walking with her, wanting this, reciprocating affections- it might be a sign that there was hope in him too. A forest fire didn't raze the earth forever. Eventually, little plants would spring up from the soil and grow anew. The same went for people.

 

         When they had spent their ardor for kissing, they lay in the grass and held one another as the afternoon stretched on.


End file.
